SINGAPORE: World Cities Summit, which was recently held in Singapore has become a popular global event. It was attended by mayors, policy makers from the field of urban governance and urban planning, scientists and technocrats from across the globe. Besides, more than a 1000 reputed corporate houses from across the continents, also attended the event.
While the policy makers and urban planners had one brainstorming session in common — how to make smart cities in the world more sustainable, they were also confronted with the issue of global terrorism.
That is the reason why Singapore, which is now globally being seen as an ideal smart city making the best use of its natural resources to cater to its 5.5 million population is also maintaining guard against the terror tactics.
Speaking at the Lee Kuan Yew prize giving ceremony in Singapore, an integral part of the World Cities Summit, Lee Hsien Loong, the Prime Minister of Singapore said, “We have achieved considerable success in making the sustainable use of our natural resources for mitigating basic civic problems like drinking water supply and need for effective sewerage treatment. Our focus is also on how to bring Singapore on the map of a smart city with zero level of pollution. We are also taking the issue of terrorism more seriously. Because we know that it has the potential to derail our development plans,” the PM said.
Divulging a plan of how to go about combating terror plans, Loong said that as a preliminary step, the entire island (Singapore) would be covered with Close Circuit TVs to keep a close vigil on ‘suspicious elements’. In fact, the government of Singapore has plans to install a record 60,000 CC TVs across the island, the PM said. The PM, however, sounded extra cautious about the citizens’ privacy. “We don’t want to invade our citizens’ privacy. As we believe in spirits of a true democracy, we will seek peoples’ opinion before taking any such security measures,” Loong said.
The issue of global terrorism which has been fueled by the recent attacks in Bangladesh, France and Afghanistan attracted the attention of the urban planners and the corporate houses present at the Summit. That is the reason why policy makers in urban governance or city planners from Toronto, Adelede or Seoul were confronted with the question-- how did they perceive the threat? So when Park Won Soon, mayor of Seoul (Republic of Korea) was speaking at length about bringing a sea change in city’s infrastructure facilities including introduction of an ‘owl bus service’ for the night revelers as part of a ‘smart city’ plan, the obvious query from the audience was how to make the safety of the commuters in the wake of growing atrocities on innocent lives. Even Vivian Balakrishnan, the minister of foreign affairs and minister-in-charge of smart nation programme, Singapore had to assure the audience against the threat of growing terrorism at a session on Innovative solutions for a smart city at the World Cities summit. “We are well aware of the threats and are committed to save the lives of our citizens,” he responded to a query from the audience.
However, indomitable spirits of the organizers (urban redevelopment authority and centre for livable cities, Singapore) marked the success of the World Cities Summit. “We want to talk development only. Singapore has proved itself to be the living example of world’s one of the best smart cities. We want to carry this reputation forward and make significant progress in the field of urban infrastructure and renewable energy. We also hope to make Singapore pollution free,” said Ng Lye Hock Larry, the managing director of the World Cities Summit.